Harry Potter and The Attack of the Killer Mosquitoes Ok, so I'm not Harry Potter - but the mosquitoes fit the plot for a Harry Potter book here.  They are giant man eating bugs that will eat you alive.  I knew something had to be up when our dorm rooms here came equiped with a jumbo spray bottle of raid and a smoke away type thing.  The worst part of all is that the mosquitoes here are not even that bad yet apparently???  I was talking with some friends in the dinning hall earlier this week and they made the comment "When summer gets here in a few weeks the mosquitoes get really bad".  Now, let me break that down for you

1. 'When summer gets here...' - As if it isn't already hot enough??? It's freakin 95 degrees!!!
2. '...in a few weeks...' - ok, so a few meaning maybe 2-3?? That means 7 weeks of China summer in hot weather with...
3. '...the mosquitoes get really bad' - Like seriously, Tabatha and I are being eaten alive - so um, yeah we have started implementing new methods for exterminating.  For example, we cut off all of the lights in our rooms except for the bathroom and we leave the door cracked. We then wait and watch for the mosquitoes to go in towards the light - then we slam the door and KILL!!! (with our jumbo bottle of Raid of course).  The other alternative is my new baby pink mosquito net canopy over my bed :)

Aside from the pests, I am enjoying myself here.  I have finally started to figure out everything here.  We had a rough first two weeks adjusting, even if our stomachs have still not fully adjusted yet - maybe they will by the time we leave?  I have just gotten out of my 3rd cold shower of the week and my room is finally no longer 95 degrees since I turned on the air conditioner fan.  (so it sounds bad, but I really am enjoying myself!)

Earlier in the week here at Jin Dong (Gold East) they switched what we were doing so we have been tracing more pipelines and taking different samples.  It is kind of exciting at times, and boring at others but what time we are not hard at work during the day we are practicing our Chinese.  Tab and I have learned a few small phrases and I think I am finally getting the hang of this 4 different tones thing. (If you are confused by the last sentence, the chinese language has 4 tones and you can say the same word, in 4 different ways and it means something completely different - I know, confusing right?). 

About the most exciting thing that happened this week though was me getting my uniform.  I look all uniform now?  Tabatha is finally happy that I am not wearing normal clothes anymore because she didn't like being the only one of us that had to dress in the monkey outfit (Ok, so its not really a monkey outfit, but its so standard). 

Anyways, I am about to head to sleep - so I think this will be a short entry - I think I should probably write more than once a week?  Who knows, depends if I have the time!

Peace!
Posted by rwpridge ( May 30 2008, 09:19:19 AM GMT+08:00 ) Permalink Comments [2]